Art Roundup – September 2013

Travesty, by Konstantin Altunin

And summer’s nearing its brilliant end in these English parts. Soon it’s back to school and all that. Is there time for a bit of art? Yes there is.

You may have heard all the brouhaha recently in St Petersburg about some satirical artworks being confiscated. It is illegal to ‘insult state authorities’ in Russia (gosh, what a surprise) and a painting by Konstantin Altunin depicting Putin and Medvedev in women’s underclothes, the former lovingly grooming the latter, was taken away when the mayor of Moscow, Vitaly Milonov, a rather bigoted individual, objected to it. The painting was part of a series of displays at the new Museum of the Authority in the old imperial capital.